Patrons of public and private parking garages, such as the ones in shopping areas, hospitals, apartment buildings, office buildings, as well as other buildings, are subject to potential attacks, molestations and other physical and mental injury as a result of the lack of appropriate surveillance at these parking garages.
To increase the safety of patrons in parking garages, at least one governmental agency has legislated that garage owners are required to either install closed loop surveillance TV cameras or have a guard make eye contact with every location in the parking garage once every half hour. Neither of these proposals is a satisfactory solution to the problem of providing adequate personal security.
The installation of TV cameras is, by far, too costly. More importantly, TV camera surveillance is normally unsatisfactory because the locations where assaults and other incidents are likely to take place, such as between parked cars, are hidden from the cameras' view.
The second proposal of having a guard make eye contact with all locations once every half hour is also unsatisfactory because an assault can take place any time between surveillance rounds. Watching all locations at all times would require a large number of guards day after day and year after year resulting in prohibitive costs.
Another type of security system is an electronic patrol system. This system functions very much like an intercom, but automatically sends sounds to a listener at a station when a threshold decibel level is reached. The disadvantage of this system is that any loud noise may trigger the system, such as car horns, dogs barking or radios. A further disadvantage is that the listener must determine from the sounds whether assistance is necessary. Serious consequences could result if the listener incorrectly determines that no assistance is required when in fact it is. Finally, the patron may be unable to scream and activate the system because the attacker has prevented it. Or, if the patron can scream, the attacker could respond and mislead the listener.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a reliable and relatively low cost personal security system for a parking garage which affords greater personal security than is presently available. It is a further object of the invention to provide a security system which is easy for the patron to use and for the garage owner to respond to the case of an emergency.